If they had been alone he would not have cared, but the Adjutant"s eyes twinkled with mirth at the ugly jest.
"That food was eaten thirty seasons ago," said the Adjutant quietly.
"Oh, the eddy that set under the walls of the fort at Allahabad!" said the Adjutant. "They came in there like widgeon to the reeds, and round and round they swung--thus!"
"I know that place," said the Adjutant. "Since those days Monghyr is a lost city.
"Ah!" said the Adjutant. "Boats like those come to Calcutta of the South.
"No one is all happy from his beak to his tail," said the Adjutant sympathetically.
He turned stiffly, and shuffled to the top of the sand-bar, while the Jackal drew back with the Adjutant to the shelter of a tree stranded on the end nearest the railway bridge.
"How can a jackal hunt with a Mugger?" said the Adjutant coolly.
"What now?" said the Adjutant, opening his wings uneasily.
All India knows I am holy." The Adjutant, being a first-class scavenger, is allowed to go where he pleases, and so this one never flinched.
"It is no more than a gun," said the Adjutant, though his very tail-feathers quivered.
Curiously enough, the Jackal and the Adjutant made the very same remark not three minutes after the men had left.